Creating Maps

Have you ever worked on your story and forgotten the name of a specific street? And then you had to read back through the pages until you found it again? Do you have lists and notebooks on your desk or in Scrivener with various locations names? Have you ever wondered if having a map would help you with your worldbuilding process?

Well, I have. And I've lost countless hours already with map creation. Partly because it's fun and I tend to get lost in it. Partly because I am not very good at it tbh. There are various free map making tools out there, especially for creating whole fantasy worlds or dungeon maps. This didn't work for my purpose though, because I already had a pretty good idea how I wanted my village to look like. My fictional village of Robins End is loosely based on a very real and existing village. So I was looking for a way to take an existing map and make some changes to it.

Here is what I came up with today. I am pretty happy with it.

So, I just wanted to share my process with you, in case you find it helpful and want to do the same:

1. Go to Google Maps and make a screenshot of the part of the village or town or landscape you need for your part of the map.
2. Open the screenshot in Canva.
3. Click "Edit Photo"
4. Use the Magic Studio Funktion "Grab Text". This allows you to delete all the Google Maps Text like street names or business names.
5. Use the Magic Studio Funktion "Magic Eraser". Erase everything you don't want on your map. Streets, houses, icons etc.
6. Some elements might get blurry in this step. Use the "Draw" function and resketch everything that got falsely erased. If you have an iPad and can use a pencil, this is easier.
7. Add new streets or paths to your map if necessary. Again, easier with a pencil.
8. Go to "Elements" and add icons or shrubbery to your map. You can also add new houses with the use of rectangular shapes.
9. Go to "Text" and add street names or add your characters.

And you're done! Canva let's you save the image as png and you can always go back to your project and edit it again at a later point. It is surely not perfect, but I find it incredibly helpful when I need to reference things or check distances.

So much for today from me. I am hoping you'll find this helpful and I'd love to see your maps if you give it a try! Let's connect on Instagram.